


Share the long road

by laughingpineapple



Category: Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective
Genre: good timeline
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-10-17
Updated: 2012-10-17
Packaged: 2017-11-16 12:40:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 1,150
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/539533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laughingpineapple/pseuds/laughingpineapple
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jowd goes back, Jowd remembers. Jowd being Jowd, he keeps it all to himself. He kisses a wife who's been dead for years, raises a daughter like she's their secondborn, paints memories he does not have, is scared of a friend he's known for so long and lost for just as much.<br/>A collection of drabbles set in the new timeline.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I'll get him to spill the beans, eventually. For now, I'm having fun with these little scenarios.

1.  
His silence lasted all of five months and began like this: Jowd reported the incident, his mind everywhere but on his papers and colleagues and noises in a world that felt so unbearably uncorrupted, and he went home, doing his best to hide the limp from a wound that already looked like it was weeks old anyway.  
Alma greeted him on the doorstep.  
The present part of him, the one that had woken up in his bed that morning to the smell of coffee, provided a feeble _right, Thursday, it's her early shift_ , did the sensible thing and shut up.  
And a lurching void got to his knees and fingertips and spread to every inch of his skin as the bleached figure that had felt so real in his memories fractured against reality and he realized how much had slipped through the cracks of time and guilt. He could not remember how she felt. He frowned and stood his ground until the back of her hand stroked his cheek as an affectionate reminder that yes, hello, I'm here?  
He sank into Alma's arms, caressed the back of her neck, recognized that that mix of lemon and lavender was a trace of her favourite softener on the clean smell of cotton, discovered the tender skin where her fingers joined and followed their shape to the tips of her nails.  
“It's nice to see you too”, she laughed. “Hard day at work? You look exhausted.”  
Her voice jolted through his veins. It was not the sad Alma he had evoked in his thoughts: another ghost vanished and left him defenceless. This Alma was quick and bright, his anchor of reason. Real.  
“Jowd?”  
He was not prepared. He had chosen not to be prepared, in that long afternoon of unwinding and reasoning and winding up again for entirely different reasons, because so many things could have still gone wrong or could have vanished altogether and delusions were not his thing. So he was not prepared and, troubled by the lack of clarity in his restless thoughts, bearing the burden of a chain of rushed, painful, distraught choices in his future, of all that had come to pass what he shared was:  
“I almost killed a man today. Almost. And I saved a cat. Almost. I think he wants a home.”


	2. Enter Guilt&Trip, worst counsellors

2.  
“What is your plan?”  
“World domination, detective”, the prisoner laughed. “What else?”  
“You know what I mean, Yomiel.”  
“And you people should really work on your questioning skills.”  
“Please.”  
“You know the answer.”  
Jowd nodded and closed his eyes. “They do not deserve any of this.” What was he hoping for, an instruction manual? There were no ways out. “It is our secret.”  
“Pretty much.”   
Yomiel grabbed his unresponsive legs, rolled on his bed, crossed his arms and went back to his own private atonement. Jowd could relate. 

“Send Sissel my regards.”  
“He will visit soon. Take care, Yomiel.”  
“...you too.”


	3. It happened before and it will happen again. Point is...

3.  
“Hey, baby.”  
Cabanela winced. No signs of life, never mind an answer, in three four five six shoot whatever patient idiot theorized that 'count to ten' delusion like it ever did any good “Jowd!”  
“Yes, old friend?”  
“The one who at least looks the paaart of the frail porcelain doll is your wife.”  
“What?”  
“As in, not me. Snap out of the empty stares, man.”  
“Sorry.”  
“And...” and he was gone, leaving Cabanela alone by the vending machines. _And trust me, I'm not going anywhere, cheer up?_ Sure. _And if you need to talk, you got my number_? That too. But no, there was something else he'd picked up that sounded like nails on the blackboard of sense.  
 _–and I'm flattered, but 'old friend'? We first met last spring._

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...point is, it hasn't happened yet and they'd better do something about that friendship 'cause like this it's the tiniest bit unbalanced and it makes me pout to no end.


	4. 'He saw the future' is a bit too much of a stretch even for his intuition.

4.  
The silences did not stop. Nor did the feeling of being watched over by an anxious, oversized hen, as if at any given moment Jowd expected him to up and do something incredibly stupid (which, to be fair, was never entirely out of the question) and felt the need to take the brunt and apologize to the world – and to Cabanela himself – instead of the usual scoffing, laughing, playing it down.  
“You up for a challenge?”  
“Depends on the challenge.”  
“We play 'best silent martyr', whatcha say?”  
Jowd sighed, arched an eyebrow and looked straight through him. “No game. You'd win.”   
That was no guess. His friend didn't do guesses. He was, however, developing a penchant for dramatic exits and Cabanela remained once more alone in the room. The evidence kept piling at his feet, but evidence of what?


	5. Fabric-ated defences

5.  
Their bed showed scars and wrinkles.   
Since 'that' day, Jowd had been searching for a protection in his sleep that the blankets could not grant him. He crawled and rolled until he lay at the center of a messy pile of rags. And she scowled and combed her memories but could find nothing better than 'that' to define it – nothing more specific than a hug, longing and a stray cat.  
Holding dearly onto her end of the sheets, Alma hid her frown under layers of fabric. She listened to his breath as it grew quick and pained or she cursed her own need for rest as she felt her consciousness fade while he remained steady, controlled, wakeful. Alone with his thoughts.  
It became a physical space for thoughts, their bed, a closed-off perimeter as the lights went out. At times, she woke up to see that her body had retreated into a corner, leaving dark things to settle in the folds of the bedspread.

And at times, Alma bridged the wound that spread between them. She didn't remember the mattress ever being so big that she couldn't reach out and pat him on the shoulder, or caress the base of his neck. If her touch could not chase away the nightmares, and she didn't delude herself into thinking it would, at least she could prod them away for a while. Get him back to some level of consciousness that he would not remember on the following day and hope that, once he fell asleep again, some of his worries would be left behind.

“Who died?”  
“The man in the park. Almost”, came his reply. Always quick. Too quick.   
Just once:  
“What happened?”  
“Nothing.” And in the same dry whisper: “It's not losing everything, it's having it back.”  
“What did you lose, Jowd?”  
Silence. He slept.

Then morning came, the thoughts dissipated, at least enough for them to leave their bed and discuss breakfast, and the day resumed as usual, usual before 'that' day, with Jowd being entirely too serious and inappropriately silly at set moments she'd learned to predict and counter.  
Alma could trust his morning kisses. She could trust the newfound tenderness in every shared gesture, from tying her ribbon to holding the bowl as she whipped egg whites.   
She did not trust her husband alone against himself.


End file.
